Ferrari F1 News

If you don’t have time to read a full qualifying report, then the short story is that Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will share the second row of the grid for tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix. However, it didn’t quite happen in the normal way. For the entire weekend, both Ferrari men declared themselves more comfortable on the Hard Pirelli than the Medium, but despite this, the Spaniard used the softer of the two to set a time good enough for third place on the final Q3 time sheet this afternoon. Fernando was delighted, as he pointed out that the one-lap performance was the team’s Achilles Heel. Clearly the Scuderia is making slow but steady progress in this area and might hope to eventually fix the problem that was beyond the ability of writers of the Greek Classics!

As for Felipe, he and his engineers decided to go for a brave gamble: as the Brazilian was not convinced about the worth of the Medium, feeling that, come what may, he would not be in the fight for the front rows, he tackled Q3 on the Hards, on which he set the sixth fastest time.
...

A fourth race of the year, a fourth circuit and a fourth set of questions for the eleven teams in the World Championship, because the Sakhir circuit in the sands of Bahrain definitely presents challenges we have not yet encountered this season. It is therefore encouraging to note that, despite a very long list on the engineers’ job sheet, the two F138 seemed to sail calmly through the first three hours of free practice today, with no real problems emerging and a general feeling within the team that, although there is still work to do, the car is again well adapted to yet another type of track and should be competitive over the rest of the weekend.

In the hands of Chinese Grand Prix winner Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa they ended the day fourth and sixth on the time sheet, having taken the virtual front row in the morning, when the Brazilian pipped the Spaniard to the fastest time. On a Friday, laps are more important than times and the Scuderia Ferrari duo amassed 93 between them.
...

Amazingly, around the time of Fernando Alonso’s regular Thursday afternoon meeting with the media, it started to rain on the desert circuit of Sakhir, not heavily but rain all the same. It’s as if even the weather feels obliged to produce something unusual and interesting to match the start of this year’s Formula 1 season.

First question for the Scuderia Ferrari driver concerned his thoughts on the fact that currently, the Drivers’ classification is headed by a quartet of world champions, Fernando himself, Vettel, Raikkonen and Hamilton. “I don’t know if I am surprised, because I didn’t have any plan in my head as to what the championship order would be after the first three races,” admitted the Spaniard. “Last year, we saw many surprises in the early part of the season and this is the time when we look at everyone’s potential and increase our own learning of the new rules and other new elements: this year the tyres are probably the main learning process we are all tackling right now. At the moment, championship positions are not really important, but at the same time, it’s not a big surprise to see Lewis where he is: he is one of the best drivers on the grid right now and last year he put McLaren in a competitive position and this year he is doing it with Mercedes. We know the Red Bull is probably the strongest car and Kimi is having a fantastic start to the season and driving maybe better than anyone.”
...

Felipe Massa was one of the panellists in this afternoon’s FIA press conference. Much of the press interrogation dealt with the media’s current obsession with tyre behaviour in China last Sunday, but the first question the Ferrari man was asked, stemmed from the fact he has won twice before in Bahrain. “What is the secret of going well here?” asked the moderator and Felipe’s answer prompted amused laughter all round, as he replied, “secret is secret!” He then went on to give a fuller answer. “I have always liked driving this circuit, since the first time I came here with Sauber in 2004. It’s a nice track, with long straights and hard braking, where traction is also important.”

The Brazilian was then asked what it was like to haves spent his entire Ferrari career partnering world champions, some of them multiple ones. “I have always had strong team-mates and many people have said that’s not a good thing, but for me it’s a positive. It motivates you to always do the best you can, because if you don’t do a perfect job, it shows, as your team-mate is always there. I have learned a lot from partnering what people all over the world have usually considered the best drivers of all. You are always under pressure to be perfect every day and I like that.”
...

The routine of packing up in the Formula 1 paddock at the end of the first leg of a back-to-back run of races is a well-practiced one, with every team member knowing his set tasks during the slick operation that can see an entire paddock move from one continent to another in a matter of a couple of days. It’s a difficult and unrewarding job at the end of the long race weekend, but if you have had a good result that afternoon, everything seems to go more smoothly and tiredness is banished to the back of the mind. Cases don’t seem so heavy and time flies by when you have just won a Grand Prix. That was definitely the case for Scuderia Ferrari on Sunday night, after Fernando Alonso’s win in China, as the forklift trucks rushed around in the dark, loading everything on the trucks that would take the precious cargo of cars and equipment to Shanghai’s Pudong Airport for the flight from Far East to Middle East, from China to Bahrain.

“It was a great weekend for us, the team did extremely well, Fernando drove an extraordinary race and I am just sorry for Felipe who was robbed of the chance to finish nearer the front, because of an issue with tyre graining,” said Scuderia Team Principal Stefano Domenicali a few hours after the Chinese Grand Prix.
...

Fernando Alonso delivered Scuderia Ferrari’s first win of the season in Shanghai this afternoon, in a race that was action packed, mainly down to the different strategies employed in managing the tyres. After a strong start, Felipe Massa had to settle for sixth at the flag but the eight points he added to the winner’s 25 means the Prancing Horse has moved ahead of Lotus to go second in the Constructors’ championship, just five points behind the leaders Red Bull.

As the lights went out both Ferrari men got great starts with Fernando moving up one place to second and Felipe up to third, helped by a slow start from Raikkonen who thus slipped from second on the grid to fourth, while Hamilton maintained his lead from pole. Felipe was right on his team-mate’s tail and by lap 4, the two of them were hassling the leading Mercedes. At the start of lap 5, Fernando slipstreamed Hamilton to get by and Felipe, determined not to be left behind dived down the inside of the Englishman to be second: a long way to go, but it was now a Ferrari one-two. Hamilton and Rosberg both pitted on lap 6. Guttierez ran into the back of Sutil on the back straight, with the Mexican retiring on track and the German in the pits.
...

There was a time in the past when the cliché about tyres in Formula 1 was that they were round and black, not very interesting and everyone had the same ones. In the modern era, only the first and last of those statements holds true and this afternoon’s qualifying for Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix was more about tyre management than outright performance.

Usually in Q1, it is the back-of-the-grid habitués who opt to run the softer tyre immediately as they try and make it to Q2, but here in Shanghai, the lap time difference between the Prime Medium and the Option Soft, provided by Pirelli, was so great that even the front runners had to come out on the Softs in Q1. Fernando and Felipe duly got through to Q2 without any problems and then dealt with the second part to make it to the top ten where, of the usual front runners, Mark Webber was missing, because of a technical problem on his Red Bull.
...